Topic 28: Sex
Jul. 1st, 2006 06:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sloaneooc: set in the middle of the third season, not in present day, for obvious reasons.
Annus Mirabilis
“Let’s talk about sex,” Judy Barnett said, about an hour after we had slept together for the first time, and when I looked at her, she actually sported a slight blush, a rare thing for a psychiatrist. “Not ours. That was… unexpected. But pleasurable. I mean sex in general.”
“Let’s not,” I said immediately. “I can’t think of a subject more dreary when analyzed and treated as academia.”
“Arvin,” she said, surprising me with her bluntness,“I didn’t come to Zurich because Jack Bristow told me you needed to get laid. He said you were… troubled and needed someone to talk to. That is what I offered, and then you manipulated me into going to dinner with you and seduced me. Not that I’m complaining, but one doesn’t have to be a genius to conclude you were using sex as an evasive tactic. I didn’t get my degree for nothing, you know.”
It was I decided to pursue the relationship. I had already imparted the information I wished her to have, so there was no reason to see her again, but I thought: why not? She was attractive, a skilled conversationalist despite her professional tendency to overanalyze every word, we were of an age and moved, one might say, in the same circles, and there was no expectation of romance. We could, perhaps, manage something approaching friendship.
“I’m sure you’ve earned it,” I said.
Her degree, of course.
“But I am afraid my opinion on sex in general would still not be worthy of your professional attention. It is a powerful part of human life, of course, I’d be the last to deny that. If not quite an unlosable game. And definitely not the answer to all questions.”
“Remind me,” Judy said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve read Larkin. How did that poem go again?”
“Sexual intercourse began/ In nineteen sixty-three/ (which was rather late for me)” I quoted, and smiled at her. “Annus Mirabilis.”
She shook her head. “No, not the opening lines. The later part. The one you were just alluding to.”
“And every life became/ A brilliant breaking of the bank,/ A quite unlosable game,” I obliged her.
“Hm. A poem which has a middle-aged man complaining that the sexual revolution came too late for him, and you know it by heart. That’s fascinating, Arvin.”
“I was thirteen in 1963,” I said, amused and, I confess, delighted by the challenge. “Which made me just the right age in the late Sixties and early Seventies, I suppose, but then again, you know my file. No orgies at Height-Ashbury, I’m afraid. I never quite saw the attraction.”
She propped herself up against the wall and looked at me. “No,” she said, calmly, “you were an ambitious young man who joined an extremely conservative government agency and married as soon as possible.”
This was in danger of losing its amusement value and becoming insulting to Emily.
“I fell in love with my future wife,” I said. “Whom we shall not discuss, Dr. Barnett.”
“Of course not,” she said in her best non-judgmental therapist manner. “We were discussing sex, not love.”
“Touché.”
“It must have been humiliating to find out,” Judy said, “that Irina Derevko didn’t just play her husband, but yourself as well. The oldest trick in the book, and all that. And you fell for it. Was that when you felt you lost the unlosable game?”
“No,” I said, and it was not even necessary to lie. I had lost it much earlier than that. “You cannot lose something which has results you cannot regret.”
She took this to refer to Sydney, as I had meant her to. I had been very careful in my confession about the affair not to hint at the daughter I actually knew I had now, the daughter I was still looking for. The Passenger. My child. Who wasn’t the only reason why I could not wish the affair with Irina away.
The truth, which I had no intention of sharing with Judy Barnett or anyone else for that matter, was, as the truth tends to be, far more complicated. Sex with Irina had been a betrayal of Emily, and that is why it should never have started, never mind the professional implication, which, yes, was somewhat sobering. But it gave me two things I needed and would have never admitted needing at the time. I was different then, and so was she. We were both playing roles in our daily lives, though Irina was the only one constantly aware that she did. It was years before I left the agency, but what I found in me in those motel rooms, in alleys and on the back seat of her car was not so far from the man who was to lead SD-6.
There was another thing she gave me. One question Judy had not asked, probably because it would imply judgment, was why, of all the women to have an affair with, I had picked my best friend’s wife, thus making the betrayal two-fold.
Or perhaps she had not asked because she had guessed. Irina had, I think; we never talked about it. The late Philip Larkin’s eloges on the outbreak of sexual freedom in the 60s aside, Judy did have a point earlier, though not quite in the way she had meant it. It would have been quite unthinkable, you see, for someone at the agency to indulge in what was quaintly called an “alternate lifestyle”. Not that I had been tempted to; even if I had not ultimately met and fallen in love with Emily. There were a few experimentations at college, and that was that. It hadn’t been a sacrifice to leave them behind when I got recruited.
Before I met Emily, however, I met Jack. Who in his singular combination of perceptiveness and blindness throughout more than three decades most certainly never had a moment of wondering, fortunately. But of course it had to be his wife. And that was how far it was would ever go.
“What are you thinking about right now?” Judy asked, and there was a touch of sleepiness in her voice which suggested it wasn’t the therapist who wanted to know, but the woman. Though profession and person are inseperable, and it is only a sentimental illusion which makes some of us believe otherwise.
“Still that Larkin poem,” I said. “So life was never better than/ In nineteen sixty-three/(Though just too late for me).”
Annus Mirabilis
“Let’s talk about sex,” Judy Barnett said, about an hour after we had slept together for the first time, and when I looked at her, she actually sported a slight blush, a rare thing for a psychiatrist. “Not ours. That was… unexpected. But pleasurable. I mean sex in general.”
“Let’s not,” I said immediately. “I can’t think of a subject more dreary when analyzed and treated as academia.”
“Arvin,” she said, surprising me with her bluntness,“I didn’t come to Zurich because Jack Bristow told me you needed to get laid. He said you were… troubled and needed someone to talk to. That is what I offered, and then you manipulated me into going to dinner with you and seduced me. Not that I’m complaining, but one doesn’t have to be a genius to conclude you were using sex as an evasive tactic. I didn’t get my degree for nothing, you know.”
It was I decided to pursue the relationship. I had already imparted the information I wished her to have, so there was no reason to see her again, but I thought: why not? She was attractive, a skilled conversationalist despite her professional tendency to overanalyze every word, we were of an age and moved, one might say, in the same circles, and there was no expectation of romance. We could, perhaps, manage something approaching friendship.
“I’m sure you’ve earned it,” I said.
Her degree, of course.
“But I am afraid my opinion on sex in general would still not be worthy of your professional attention. It is a powerful part of human life, of course, I’d be the last to deny that. If not quite an unlosable game. And definitely not the answer to all questions.”
“Remind me,” Judy said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve read Larkin. How did that poem go again?”
“Sexual intercourse began/ In nineteen sixty-three/ (which was rather late for me)” I quoted, and smiled at her. “Annus Mirabilis.”
She shook her head. “No, not the opening lines. The later part. The one you were just alluding to.”
“And every life became/ A brilliant breaking of the bank,/ A quite unlosable game,” I obliged her.
“Hm. A poem which has a middle-aged man complaining that the sexual revolution came too late for him, and you know it by heart. That’s fascinating, Arvin.”
“I was thirteen in 1963,” I said, amused and, I confess, delighted by the challenge. “Which made me just the right age in the late Sixties and early Seventies, I suppose, but then again, you know my file. No orgies at Height-Ashbury, I’m afraid. I never quite saw the attraction.”
She propped herself up against the wall and looked at me. “No,” she said, calmly, “you were an ambitious young man who joined an extremely conservative government agency and married as soon as possible.”
This was in danger of losing its amusement value and becoming insulting to Emily.
“I fell in love with my future wife,” I said. “Whom we shall not discuss, Dr. Barnett.”
“Of course not,” she said in her best non-judgmental therapist manner. “We were discussing sex, not love.”
“Touché.”
“It must have been humiliating to find out,” Judy said, “that Irina Derevko didn’t just play her husband, but yourself as well. The oldest trick in the book, and all that. And you fell for it. Was that when you felt you lost the unlosable game?”
“No,” I said, and it was not even necessary to lie. I had lost it much earlier than that. “You cannot lose something which has results you cannot regret.”
She took this to refer to Sydney, as I had meant her to. I had been very careful in my confession about the affair not to hint at the daughter I actually knew I had now, the daughter I was still looking for. The Passenger. My child. Who wasn’t the only reason why I could not wish the affair with Irina away.
The truth, which I had no intention of sharing with Judy Barnett or anyone else for that matter, was, as the truth tends to be, far more complicated. Sex with Irina had been a betrayal of Emily, and that is why it should never have started, never mind the professional implication, which, yes, was somewhat sobering. But it gave me two things I needed and would have never admitted needing at the time. I was different then, and so was she. We were both playing roles in our daily lives, though Irina was the only one constantly aware that she did. It was years before I left the agency, but what I found in me in those motel rooms, in alleys and on the back seat of her car was not so far from the man who was to lead SD-6.
There was another thing she gave me. One question Judy had not asked, probably because it would imply judgment, was why, of all the women to have an affair with, I had picked my best friend’s wife, thus making the betrayal two-fold.
Or perhaps she had not asked because she had guessed. Irina had, I think; we never talked about it. The late Philip Larkin’s eloges on the outbreak of sexual freedom in the 60s aside, Judy did have a point earlier, though not quite in the way she had meant it. It would have been quite unthinkable, you see, for someone at the agency to indulge in what was quaintly called an “alternate lifestyle”. Not that I had been tempted to; even if I had not ultimately met and fallen in love with Emily. There were a few experimentations at college, and that was that. It hadn’t been a sacrifice to leave them behind when I got recruited.
Before I met Emily, however, I met Jack. Who in his singular combination of perceptiveness and blindness throughout more than three decades most certainly never had a moment of wondering, fortunately. But of course it had to be his wife. And that was how far it was would ever go.
“What are you thinking about right now?” Judy asked, and there was a touch of sleepiness in her voice which suggested it wasn’t the therapist who wanted to know, but the woman. Though profession and person are inseperable, and it is only a sentimental illusion which makes some of us believe otherwise.
“Still that Larkin poem,” I said. “So life was never better than/ In nineteen sixty-three/(Though just too late for me).”
